Life
(1999)
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Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence team up for a prison comedy underlined by serious social commentary. Rayford Gibson (Murphy), an opportunistic con man, and Claude Banks (Lawrence), an ambitious bank teller, are complete opposites who cross paths in 1930s Harlem. In order to pay off their debts to a local crime lord, the mismatched pair travel into the Deep South on a moonshine delivery only to be framed for murder by a racist Southern cop. Sentenced to life in a Mississippi state prison, the bickering duo spend the next 60 years trading barbs and planning their escape, at the same time forming an unlikely but touching friendship. |
It's sad to see Eddie Murphy so completely unfunny in this cross between The Shawshank Redemption and The Odd Couple. Street-smart Eddie and bank clerk Martin Lawrence are framed by a Deep South sheriff for murder, and sent to a Mississippi jail for life. Initially racist and brutal, the regime lightens up when warden Ned Beatty takes over and makes the pair his house servants. The necessary chemistry between chalk-and-cheese Murphy and Lawrence is absent, so their banter is simply unpleasant rather than hilarious, while the prison comes across as a holiday camp housing whimsical toughies. It's a situation that's strangely lacking in tension and, indeed, regimentation. And, like the film, it's certainly without humour.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Amiable prison variation on The Odd Couple, which gets by on the interplay between its two stars, though reality never intrudes.